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Linux News for Dec 24, 2008

19 Standards Orgs. - and Over 13,300 Members - Support Rambus Brief(Dec 24, 2008, 22:04)Standards Blog: "Yesterday I filed a pro bono
amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief with the United States
Supreme Court in support of the Federal Trade Commission's petition
for writ of certiorari in its suit against Rambus Technologies. I'm
pleased to report that 19 standard setting organizations (SSOs),
representing over 13,300 members, joined as amici curiae supporting
this brief; the list of participants appears later in this blog
entry."

AIR on Linux Test Run(Dec 24, 2008, 19:34)Cyber Cynic: "AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is
a cross-operating system runtime that lets you use rich Internet
applications that combine HTML, Ajax, Adobe Flash, and Adobe Flex
technologies. What that means to you and me is that it's lets us
run another kind of application on our Internet-connected Windows
PCs, Macs, and just this month, Linux desktop computers."

Linux in 2009: Recession vs. GNU(Dec 24, 2008, 19:04)Datamation: "Pundits and business executives
alike are predicting gloomy economic times for 2009. But when the
talk turns to free and open source software (FOSS), suddenly the
mood brightens. Whether their concern is the business opportunities
in open source or the promotion of free software idealism, experts
see FOSS as starting from a strong base and actually benefiting
from the hard times expected next year."

Wiping Disks With DBAN(Dec 24, 2008, 18:34)Tip of the Trade: "DBAN (Darik's Boot And Nuke)
is designed to fully and securely wipe your disk. It's a
downloadable self-contained boot disk, available for CD/DVD, floppy
disk, or USB flash drive."

Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier Discusses OpenSUSE 11.1(Dec 24, 2008, 18:04)Desktop Linux: "Q1 -- When I installed OpenSUSE
11.1, I had to agree to the new license first, but it only seemed
to be available in English. Given SUSE's proud history as Europe's
top Linux desktop, are there plans to translate the license to, for
example, German?"Why have a EULA at all?--ed.

The Other Secret to Red Hat's Success: A Magazine Article (No Joke)(Dec 24, 2008, 17:34)The VAR Guy: "What's the biggest secret to Red
Hat's success in a down economy? Plenty of pundits think it's Linux
and JBoss open source middleware. But The VAR Guy has another
theory: One of Red Hat's smartest moves is promoting a particularly
influential magazine article about the company."

Mplayer, FFmpeg Gain VA-API Support(Dec 24, 2008, 17:04)Phoronix: "Video acceleration APIs for Linux
has been a hot topic recently with NVIDIA having introduced VDPAU
last month (the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix) that
brings PureVideo-like features to Linux with great results while
it's already finding its way into MPlayer, FFmpeg, MythTV, Xine,
and VLC. AMD has been working hard on XvBA (X-Video Bitstream
Acceleration), but that has yet to be officially introduced."

Alan Cox and the End of an Era(Dec 24, 2008, 16:34)Open Enterprise: "I don't know what Cox will be
doing at Intel, but as an employee of a hardware company he is
likely to be involved in dealing with the kind of lower-level
issues that have presumably become increasingly scarce at Red Hat.
Assuming that's the case, this will be good news both for Cox and
for the free software world."

Security Trends of 2008 and Predictions for 2009(Dec 24, 2008, 16:04)Help Net Security: "As a new year approaches we
must prepare for new Internet security threats. Every year, new and
innovative ways of attacking computer users emerge and continue to
increase in volume and severity. To know where we are going it is
helpful to look at where we have been."This isn't really about security trends-- it's about threat
trends. --ed.

Tech Writing Tips From the LinuxPlanet Pros(Dec 24, 2008, 15:04)LinuxPlanet: "I've never believed that the
distinction between "amateur" and "professional" was quality; that
is, that amateur means poor quality and professional = high
quality. The only difference is professionals get paid."

OpenVAS Charts Its Own Forked Course(Dec 24, 2008, 14:34)Internet News: "One of the notable features of
open source software is forking. If an open source project takes a
direction that users or developers don't like, well, they can fork
off in a new direction."

Debian Seeking New Project Secretary(Dec 24, 2008, 13:04)Linux Magazine: "Current balloting for Debian
Lenny's future has led to strife in the organization. Secretary of
the free project, Manoj Srivastava, has resigned his position. A
possible consequence is that the next version will undergo further
delay in its release."

Weekly Ten (12-22-2008)(Dec 24, 2008, 12:34)Tech Source From Bohol: "9. Hard Work and
Practice in Programming
There's a long arc in computing that teaches us how much we gain
through advances in ease-of-use, with the iPhone being the latest
breakthrough success..."

Best Wishes for the New Year(Dec 24, 2008, 08:34)Linux Journal: "These days, there is an almost
unfathomable number of ways in which to communicate. I have a
telephone, email, snail mail, and a multitude of Instant Messaging
accounts. I have a cell phone and can send and receive text
messages. I'm on MySpace. I can receive phone calls over the
Internet via SIP. I'm on IRC and various mailing lists. You would
think that I use these wonderful tools to keep in touch with
friends and family."

Revised Slackware Keeps it Simple(Dec 24, 2008, 04:34)Linux.com: "At a time when new and buggy
features cloud basic computer functions, it's refreshing to see a
new release of a distro like Slackware that stays true to its core
philosophy. Slackware has an unfair reputation of being a distro
only for experienced users. Granted it doesn't sport many graphical
configuration tools, but it balances that with stability and
speed."

Higher and Further: The Innovations of Linux 2.6.28(Dec 24, 2008, 03:04)Heise Open Source: "The Ext4 file system leaves
its main development phase and will soon be ripe for productive
use. Major renovation work on the code for memory and disk
management promises GPU speed increases and better scalability.
Hundreds of new and revised drivers improve hardware compatibility
significantly."

Demise of the Hard-Disk? I Think Not(Dec 24, 2008, 01:34)Another Signpost on the Information
Superhighway: "Computer world is running a post talking
about the demise of the hard-disk (HD) in favor of solid state
drives (SSD). The post has so many errors in it I have a hard time
figuring out where to begin."